Little Rivers [15]
very long night for the boy.
What is that rustling noise outside the tent? Probably some small
creature, a squirrel or a rabbit. Rabbit stew would be good for
breakfast. But it sounds louder now, almost loud enough to be a
fox,--there are no wolves left in the Adirondacks, or at least only
a very few. That is certainly quite a heavy footstep prowling
around the provision-box. Could it be a panther,--they step very
softly for their size,--or a bear perhaps? Sam Dunning told about
catching one in a trap just below here. (Ah, my boy, you will soon
learn that there is no spot in all the forests created by a
bountiful Providence so poor as to be without its bear story.)
Where was the rifle put? There it is, at the foot of the tent-
pole. Wonder if it is loaded?
"Waugh-ho! Waugh-ho-o-o-o!"
The boy springs from his blankets like a cat, and peeps out between
the tent-flaps. There sits Enos, in the shelter of a leaning tree
by the fire, with his head thrown back and a bottle poised at his
mouth. His lonely eye is cocked up at a great horned owl on the
branch above him. Again the sudden voice breaks out:
"Whoo! whoo! whoo cooks for you all?"
Enos puts the bottle down, with a grunt, and creeps off to his
tent.
"De debbil in dat owl," he mutters. "How he know I cook for dis
camp? How he know 'bout dat bottle? Ugh!"
There are hundreds of pictures that flash into light as the boy
goes on his course, year after year, through the woods. There is
the luxurious camp on Tupper's Lake, with its log cabins in the
spruce-grove, and its regiment of hungry men who ate almost a deer
a day; and there is the little bark shelter on the side of Mount
Marcy, where the governor and the boy, with baskets full of trout
from the Opalescent River, are spending the night, with nothing but
a fire to keep them warm. There is the North Bay at Moosehead,
with Joe La Croix (one more Frenchman who thinks he looks like
Napoleon) posing on the rocks beside his canoe, and only reconciled
by his vanity to the wasteful pastime of taking photographs while
the big fish are rising gloriously out at the end of the point.
There is the small spring-hole beside the Saranac River, where
Pliny Robbins and the boy caught twenty-three noble trout, weighing
from one to three pounds apiece, in the middle of a hot August
afternoon, and hid themselves in the bushes when ever they heard a
party coming down the river, because they did not care to attract
company; and there are the Middle Falls, where the governor stood
on a long spruce log, taking two-pound fish with the fly, and
stepping out at every cast a little nearer to the end of the log,
until it slowly tipped with him, and he settled down into the
river.
Among such scenes as these the boy pursued his education, learning
many things that are not taught in colleges; learning to take the
weather as it comes, wet or dry, and fortune as it falls, good or
bad; learning that a meal which is scanty fare for one becomes a
banquet for two--provided the other is the right person; learning
that there is some skill in everything, even in digging bait, and
that what is called luck consists chiefly in having your tackle in
good order; learning that a man can be just as happy in a log
shanty as in a brownstone mansion, and that the very best pleasures
are those that do not leave a bad taste in the mouth. And in all
this the governor was his best teacher and his closest comrade.
Dear governor, you have gone out of the wilderness now, and your
steps will be no more beside these remembered little rivers--no
more, forever and forever. You will not come in sight around any
bend of this clear Swiftwater stream where you made your last cast;
your cheery voice will never again ring out through the deepening
twilight where you are lingering for your disciple to catch up with
you; he will never again hear you